Holding onto my Heart like a Hand Grenade
by countertime
Summary: And then comes the day that nothing changes but everything's different. The story is in what they don't say. A study of Mason/George without being Mason/George.
1. this is not a love song

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holding onto my heart {like a hand grenade}

[She's a rebel greenday]

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Mason slides into the booth and it feels like her whole body exhales. He grins easily, readily, and she doesn't so much think as she responds just as boldly, happy to see him and not bothering with the pretense of her signature apathy.

(Roxy once told her that he lit up when she came into the Wafflehouse. Lit up. She isn't sure what to make of that, in the purpose of telling her. More to the point, she doesn't understand why she can't let it go.)

He won't sit next to her; some days it annoys her more than she can stand. She can't think of a reason why he deliberately places himself across from her, fully in her view but wholly out of reach, (sometimes, she gets the feeling that he tries not to touch her very much). It drives her mad until she catches his eyes as Daisy says something pithy and somehow bittersweet.

It's only for a moment, but it's theirs.

And so what she thinks almost immediately, so fucking what, she thinks repeatedly.

Men and women can't be friends (Mostly because other people won't let them be. There is always someone to point out how someone she'd only thought of as friend is also male and then, well then). And it's not like she hasn't thought of it herself, but that first sight newly dead- therefore slightly traumatized gut reaction has long since been buried. A secret she can't admit to. (Everyone knows that getting the shimmies for Mason is like petting a cat the wrong way, like a screwdriver made slightly sonic. Ridiculous.)

So she stays the course with pretty boys who handle their despair like well carved stone- monuments and monumental both- and he continues to tilt at windmills- Daisy and college girls with the hots for her dad- and they are friends. Truly. Sometimes it feels like he's the only real friend she's ever had, (or maybe she's finally hit the rock bottom alive again _sortof_ enough to admit to those inane human insecurities she used to keep locked Tupperware tight inside her).

Sometimes she calls him her best friend, slips and says it to his face, and she's pretty sure no one should be that excited to hear that over the age of five.

Except they never really talk about their conquests because they aren't _that_ type of friends.

Maybe that's a little odd. Maybe it's a bit of alright. (Daisy talks enough about herself that hearing her virtues extolled from a secondary source is a hatchety murderspree short of acceptable).

She doesn't try to explain it most days, on the days when she's stuck on the curves of his palm or distracted by the crook of his smile. Or when a word or a glance of his sticks in her veins like molasses, clogging up her ventricles until her heart's full of him.

Most days.

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	2. your heart is not the beat

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holding onto my heart {like a hand grenade}

[She's a Rebel greenday]

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Sometimes George wonders if there is something _brokenmissingwiredwrong_ that she can't understand relationships, can't function in them. She can't tweak the math to find her other half, one and one make two in all of her estimations.

And maybe she's just a little bit glad that she's never felt anything but whole, unfinished maybe, but nothing less than herself.

(She is herself, but she can't help but feel that it's a poor consolation prize.)

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If she was alive which, she is almost certain she isn't, she'd be at a crossroads of kids or cats. The tick tock of a biological clock and the ineffability of female hormones (and really, f them in the end) and she is almost apalled with how badly she needs to care for something that can't completely care for itself.

Option C was Mason. The safe choice.

(Well, she thinks, she's been wrong before.)

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He is her friend.

More simply: he is hers. And she is so tired of goodbyes and letting go of things before she is ready.

(He gets her in ways she didn't know were misunderstood.)

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He's in love. Again.

He's glowing and she isn't heartless enough to ask what the girl's deficit is, doesn't need to imply that this is the beginning of another failed romance. Too much honesty can be so unkind and she's not that cruel.

(Except when she is and when she does.)

She just might do lonely less well than most people.

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(Sometimes it's not that she wants him, it's just that she wants.)

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	3. this isn't a fairytale

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holding onto my heart {like a hand grenade}

[She's a Rebel greenday]

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It isn't fair to him.

It's a good decision, she reasons, true to their friendship at least.

Even if she wanted it, wanted him and not the idea of him but the everyday reality, she wouldn't know how to start.

It isn't fair to either of them.

He'd never speak to her again if he knew, she's sure. She wouldn't. Situation being reversed, she'd be awkward and it's a little creepy really, when you think about it. When he thinks her his best friend, and she's thinking these thoughts and bringing ulterior motives to every action and reading into things. It's not flattering, it's not destiny. It's boredom and too few options. And if he was a little less high and a little more observant he would notice her acting like a crazy person _all the time._

(Thank fuck for that.)

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It's there on his face when he speaks about his new girl.

But it's not the first time she's misjudged the outcome. Seen all the facts and put them together not quite right. Or maybe its just hindsight, which has the beauty of being twenty/twenty. (It's that uncertainty that undoes her.)

She's supportive when all she really wants him to do is shut up.

(She was always ready for this to end)

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Shut it down.

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To be clear,

She redoubles her efforts, tries to bring it back to where they were. When friends wasn't always preceded with just, and followed by longing.

To be precise,

It feels like love's in her heart like a bomb.

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	4. this is not last call

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HOLDING ONTO MY HEART {LIKE A HAND GRENADE}

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There is a world where it is always Sunday. Where you wake up and have nothing but time and only the dim sense of impending Monday.

(That's every day in the Der Waffle House.)

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She hasn't seen him for a month.

His girlfriend takes up most of his time, and her work takes up most of hers. And while the graph of best-friend-forever time quickly drops to zero, she isn't sweating the difference. Her life is full and her time is hers and if she looks over her shoulder, _it isn't as if she's looking for him_.

But even with him gone, George can feel the residual hum of his presence, the flicker of his hurt like background radiation.

She isn't worried. She's said worse, afterall. And he loves fiercely and forever, and not for a second does she doubt that he doesn't love her.

(She knows, very well, that it doesn't mean he'll come back).

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He's proven his point, in case anyone was wondering.

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She runs into him quite by accident, a day after Roxy has pinned her with a glare, with the simple message to fix this. Daisy, of course, fills in the blanks and George wants her to stop, wants her to keep going, and thinks maybe she always knew it would end this way.

He's happy. He has someone. (And all she hears is; he never needed her as much as she thought.)

So there he is. Grinning and maniac. Like there wasn't a month between them and more space besides.

He calls to her, her name made sweet, and for a moment she wishes he'd stayed gone. Because she does what she does best, and makes things worse (and doesn't know how to take it all back).

Mason fixes her with a look that breaks the most fragile part of her, like he doesn't know her, never really knew her; as if she hadn't spent all this time showing him her insides.

(And the look on his face, fuck, the look on his face)

She can't watch him walk away.

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(And it was irrational and stupid and too much to ask for, but she bites her lip and thinks again, he could've fought for her)

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It happens like this:

A late reap, an unpaid meter, and a 200 dollar ticket for parking in front of a fire hydrant.

She swears heartily and wants, for just a moment, a life that isn't always this fucking hard.

So really, she shouldn't be so surprised to see Mason.

There's a caution in his eyes. Like the world was too big for him and he's got nobody to cling to. She likes that she can read that in the curve of his shoulder- cause sometimes the world's a little big for her too.

(And really, she doesn't know what she thought, if she wanted, or how to stop.)

Something sticks to the back of her throat-

(she thinks it might be her heart)

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....

The true tragedy of Georgia's life is not that she died young.

(She won't realize this until it's much too late.)

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End file.
